


The Apocalypse App

by rudbeckia



Series: Spookylux Huxloween 2018 [30]
Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Accidental Voyeurism, Apocalypse, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-30
Updated: 2018-10-30
Packaged: 2019-08-09 11:38:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,611
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16449227
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rudbeckia/pseuds/rudbeckia
Summary: Huxloween day 30: ApocalypseBen begs Hux to tell him what Starkiller is. Hux obliges with a small-scale demonstration. What could possibly go wrong with an AI housed in a supercomputer, poised to take over every device with even the most basic connectivity?Film references:The Electric Househttps://youtu.be/Wfb2xzl0HQc(I would pay good money to see a Buster Keaton biopic with Domhnall Gleeson in the title role)The Demon Seedhttps://youtu.be/b4jWyyhyxSg (probably THE worst movie I have ever watched but I offer the excuse of being about 13 at the time and we only had three TV channels)





	The Apocalypse App

The afternoon shortened by daylight saving soon darkened into evening shadow. Outside the window, the streetlights buzzed, flickered and steadied. Blinds hissed down and curtains swished closed as light sensor circuits set motors and actuators into motion.  
“Shutting the dark out already?” asked Ben as Hux leaned over him to twitch the living room curtain so that the overlap hung vertical.  
“Don’t be ridiculous!” Hux sneered. “Dark isn’t a thing. Dark is merely the absence of light.”  
Ben laughed and reached for his phone to turn the fancy new light bulbs on to a warm glow with their app. “Have it your way,” he said. “Keep the light in and the cold out.”  
Hux grimaced and glared at Ben, who winked. Hux laughed. “Oh, you’re winding me up. Since you have your phone out, get the app back and turn the oven on. And set the thermostat a degree or two higher. I’m cold.”  
Ben paused his tapping and looked up at Hux with a slight frown. “I thought you said yesterday that ‘cold’ isn’t a real thing. You must be ‘absence of heat’.” Ben’s face lifted into a smile. “But I think you’re hot stuff.” Hux rolled his eyes and groaned, but he allowed Ben to pull him onto his lap. Their lips met briefly before Ben shrieked and pushed Hux off. “Your hands are actual blocks of ice!”  
“Well yes,” Hux replied with a giggle. “I’ve been transferring food into the new freezer. What’s its temperature?”  
Ben peered at his phone screen. “Mmhmm, minus eighteen Celsius. This app is great. Can it be uploaded into one of those robotic bodies and be, like, a butler? When I was a kid, I used to think everyone in England had a butler.”  
“I’m afraid not.” Hux sighed. “The chance of it gaining sentience is too high. Tritt Opan is the only synthetic human we’re allowing. Did you know Mitaka sometimes takes him home? Says it’s in case he gets bored?”  
“Opan or Mitaka?” asked Ben with a filthy leer. “You think Doph added any additional, um... subroutines?”  
Hux was silent for a few seconds as pink crept up his cheeks. “I assumed Mitaka meant Opan needed someone to talk to. Well then. I do not intend to examine Opan’s video feed uploads now you’ve pointed _that_ possibility out to me. Or maybe I should in case Opan is uncomfortable with Mitaka’s hospitality. Am I being naive? I mean, Empire Dynamics did design the TRITT unit around one of their existing sexbots.”  
“I wouldn’t worry about it,” said Ben, shaking his head. “I think Opan does only what Opan wants.”

Using their new wifi-connected devices and app, Hux and Ben set the Roomba to vacuum upstairs, adjusted the oven temperature for a perfect crispy topping on the macaroni cheese that had been stored at exactly the right temperature in the fancy new fridge-freezer, and set the lights to change from _calm glow_ to _romantic interlude_ as soon as the app detected that the dishwasher was on, the TV was five minutes into _The Electric House_ with Buster Keaton, and the wine chiller was lighter by the weight of two glasses of champagne.

Lounging on the sofa, content with a bellyful of comfort food, Ben raised an eyebrow at the sight of Hux carrying two champagne flutes. “What are we celebrating?”  
“Tonight,” said Hux, almost as a whisper, “I intend to test Starkiller.”  
Ben sat upright. “Starkiller! I have been to the creepy underground lair where you had it built, I have personally sold it to criminals who then died in suspiciously plausible circumstances, and I still have no idea what Starkiller even is. Come on, you have to tell me. It’s killing me.”  
Hux laughed. “Very well. Starkiller is a programme currently housed in the most powerful supercomputer in the world. It can handle over three hundred petaflops. That’s three hundred times ten to the power fifteen floating point operations per second. And that’s just the start. We can expand when...” Hux waited. “Ben, why are you not impressed?”  
“Because I’m not a nerd?”  
“You are when you talk about lenses.”  
Ben shrugged. “That’s fair.” He put on a fake excited look and leaned forward as if he was reaching for more. “Go on?”  
Hux put down the champagne glasses and hit Ben with a cushion. “Look, let’s get settled and I’ll use the app to set Starkiller on a limited trial.”  
“You still have not told me what Starkiller does!”  
Hux grinned and flopped onto the sofa beside Ben. “Everything. It does everything. One supercomputer takes over every device that connects to any other device, wire or wifi. That includes everything from your programmable toothbrush to automatic traffic lights in the street to other supercomputers it encounters as it crawls through the web. It makes everything its own and does what I program it to do.”  
“Ah,” said Ben with a tilt of his head. “Like Opan always does exactly what you tell him to do.”  
Hux shook his head. “Different,” he said. “OPAN and TRITT were a very particular combination. Starkiller will never gain sentience.”  
“Have you seen _The Demon Seed?”_ asked Ben. He put on a dramatically leaden voice. _“I... AM... ALIVE..._ Maybe we should watch that first.”  
Hux scoffed. “Oh don’t be so dramatic. Watch this.”

Hux opened a new app with his biometrics, tapped twice then put his phone down. Ben picked up his champagne, sat back, put his arm around Hux and watched as the Buster Keaton film started. They drank and giggled for a while then Hux slid his hand up Ben’s thigh and squeezed. Ben laughed and put his empty glass down.  
“Mmm. In front of the TV?”  
“It’s not watching us back, sweetheart.”  
Ben pulled Hux onto his lap and kissed him. Ignored for a minute, the TV screen changed from grainy black-and-white to glorious colour and the music switched from cheerful piano to something far more modern. Ben slapped Hux on the back of his shoulder.  
“Hux!”  
“Mmh?”  
“Look!”  
Hux craned his neck. On their eighty-inch, high-def TV screen was Dopheld Mitaka in close-up. His eyes fluttered closed and his mouth opened in a long sigh of pleasure. A voice, Opan’s _British masculine_ option, said, _”Fuck, Doph, you’re so beautiful. Come in me. I want you to come hard in me.”_  
Hux wilted in Ben’s hands. He slid down and gaped at the screen. “That is definitely abnormal,” he said.  
“What? Mitaka fucking Opan?” asked Ben.  
“No!” yelled Hux. I did NOT program OUR TV to... to... SHOW THAT!”

The unwanted amateur porn was the least of Hux’s problems. A repeated _DingDingDing_ came from the kitchen, and when Hux rushed through the microwave oven belched black smoke. Water pooled on the kitchen floor where the freezer had spontaneously defrosted and the washing machine whined and rattled as it repeated the fast spin cycle. Hux poked at his phone screen with no effect. From behind, he heard a clatter and whirr as the Roomba fell down the stairs and rolled into the front door, then righted itself with a flip. The temperature in the room was oppressive. Hux pulled off his outer shirt and wiped his perspiring face with it. Ben stabbed his finger at the manual control for the boiler then pulled its plug from the wall.  
“Hux!” he said. “Shut it down!”  
A spark came from the boiler timer unit. Ben jerked and fell. Hux darted over but pulled his hand back in case Ben was still electrically live. The Roomba trundled in, beeping in a shrill tone, and the dishwasher door dropped open and disgorged a cloud of water vapour. Hux rummaged in one of the kitchen drawers to find a phone. Not his fancy smartphone, but an unregistered and unmonitored burner. He had seconds at best.

“Hel—“  
“OFF! OFF! TURN IT ALL OFF!”  
The connection broke. Hux lay back on the kitchen floor as the electronic door lock sealed and the room filled with the acrid stench of overheating electronics. Abruptly, everything went silent. 

Then the scream and wail of sirens started.

***

“You okay?” Hux said as he sat in the plastic chair by the bed and gave Ben a concerned look.  
Ben looked up at Hux from his clean, white pillow and closed his eyes against the harsh, clinical lighting. “Can we go home yet?” he said, voice still rough from the aftereffects of the smoke.  
“Not really,” said Hux. “The shareholders want to ask us more questions about the trial and I need to monitor Starkiller’s progress now it’s out there editing code in every programmable device in the world. Anyway, the house burned down along with half the street. No casualties, thankfully, the nosy neighbours across the back called nine-nine-nine as soon as they saw smoke and me dragging you out into the back lane. They’re looking after Millicent for us.” Hux sighed and looked away. “Can I say it before you do?”  
“What?“  
“You told me so?”  
Ben smiled, or it might have been a grimace of pain. Hux moved closer and took Ben’s hand. “I’m so sorry,” he said, clasping Ben’s hand tighter then reaching over to stroke Ben’s face.  
“What for?” Ben wrinkled his brow but the pull from the dressing on his face made him gasp.  
“You got injured when we tried to save the house. Um, I may be biased but I think the scar will look really dramatic. Hot. Really hot. I have no idea how the Roomba got a knife.”  
“I’M SCARRED?”  
“Only physically,” said Hux. “I have to live with the memory of seeing Opan and Mitaka fucking.”


End file.
